Thanks to the champagne, hunting for a sofa on bank holiday Monday was not such a chore as expected. I was looking for my wife who’d gone AWOL in a certain well-known store. Each time I passed the sales desk a different salesperson thrust a plastic glass of bubbly at me. I was reaching for the third when my wife escorted me to the exit.
But while the experience was pleasant enough for me, it underlined, along with the half-price offers, just how hard furniture retailers are having to work for sales. Consumer confidence has slipped and big ticket items are getting increasingly tough to shift. According to the CBI, white goods electricals and car sales are also suffering.
The other big area of concern is construction. Building starts have slipped and the housing market is stagnating. Home owners also seem to be putting off refurbishment projects they might have tackled if they were selling. Hence a reported fall in sales of DIY goods, hard floorings and carpets.
We report the knock-on of the tightening economy in the timber trade, with Richard Burbidge, Forest Garden and JELD-WEN all announcing job cuts.
But while the headlines may be gloomy at the moment, most commentators still insist the UK economy is in for a soft landing. Manufacturers’ exports are rising, the wholesale sector is proving resilient and PricewaterhouseCoopers predicts that, provided the US and Euroland economies do not stall, interest rate cuts later in the year could still lead to GDP growth of 2-2.25% in 2005 and 2006.
Most pundits agree too that public construction work, notably in schools and affordable housing, will help take up some of the private sector slack – which has to be good news for timber.
This week we also report on several companies expressing faith in the future with major investment. And we have the news that the TTF has secured a place on the government’s Sustainable Procurement Task Force. This should give the industry an added boost in the public construction sector – a happier excuse for raising a glass.
